On Monday, USA Today reported that a new antiturst lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of NCAA players is going to go after one of the NCAA’s sacred cows – television revenue.
The lawsuit focuses on the NCAA’s restrictions for athletes to use their name, image, and likeness (or NIL, for simplicity’s sake) to earn money, and is looking for a share of the billions of dollars of TV rights fees paid by networks to the NCAA and its conferences.
The suit, which seeks to be a class action, not only asks that the NCAA be prevented from having association-wide rules that “restrict the amount of name, image, and likeness compensation available” to athletes but also seeks unspecified damages based on the share of television-rights money and the social media earnings it claims athletes would have received if the NCAA’s current limits on NIL compensation had not existed.
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Specifically, the suit claims that football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players at schools in the Power Five conferences are entitled to damages related to the use of their NIL’s during telecasts of games and that athletes in any sport at a Power Five school are entitled to damages related to social media earnings.
Three states, California, Colorado, and (most recently) Florida, have passed laws that would allow athletes to use their NIL to make money.
As for why the lawsuit is going after TV money, that would be because the athletes contribute to the televised product that networks are paying for, and they don’t receive a cut of that revenue.
It cites the NCAA’s multi-billion-dollar multi-media and marketing rights contract connected to the Division I men’s basketball tournament, other TV deals by conferences and alleges that “student-athletes do not receive any share in those revenues apart from the limited scholarships and benefits that NCAA rules permit. Absent these restraints, student-athletes would receive the market value commensurate with what they contribute.”
I have zero idea if this lawsuit is going to gain any traction, if it’ll be settled or go to trial, or if it’ll be dismissed sooner rather than later and we’ll forget about it. But the battle over NIL rights is not ending any time soon, no matter how much the NCAA tries to put out the inferno with a thimble of water.
